This is the kind of film that gives ammunition to all those who say "I hate them artsy-fartsy foreign films!"
It is nothing more than a pastiche of disjointed ideas, all of which Fassbinder must have thought to be absolutely gangbusters, but a complete mystery to anyone else.
Mechanically, the movie is bad: the actors all seem to sleepwalk their way through the scenes. If they indeed planned it that way, it just doesn't work. Not even the most basic of special effects are used, when a simple one would do: a tiny ketchup splat on a shirt would at least let you know the shooter did not miss. (A quibble, maybe; but if nothing else is there to redeem the film, one tends to quibble.)
Story-wise, no one acts with any sense of logic or awareness. A woman sits on the edge of a bed while a couple makes love, and tells a pointless tale which doesn't have an end. (Oh, how significant!)
Someone commits suicide, and all you're left with is a feeling of how totally unrealistic it was. Why would she do that right then and right there? And why was it even filmed? Does it add anything to the story, the mood, the feeling of the film? No. Pointless...
The ending is horrible. It makes no sense, the people involved don't act anywhere near believably. Seeing the dead man's brother "wrestling" with him in an almost necrophilic way, drawn out in slow-motion to apparently give it some grander sense of significance or merit, you're just left with a big sense of...
"..well that was huge waste of my time."
It is nothing more than a pastiche of disjointed ideas, all of which Fassbinder must have thought to be absolutely gangbusters, but a complete mystery to anyone else.
Mechanically, the movie is bad: the actors all seem to sleepwalk their way through the scenes. If they indeed planned it that way, it just doesn't work. Not even the most basic of special effects are used, when a simple one would do: a tiny ketchup splat on a shirt would at least let you know the shooter did not miss. (A quibble, maybe; but if nothing else is there to redeem the film, one tends to quibble.)
Story-wise, no one acts with any sense of logic or awareness. A woman sits on the edge of a bed while a couple makes love, and tells a pointless tale which doesn't have an end. (Oh, how significant!)
Someone commits suicide, and all you're left with is a feeling of how totally unrealistic it was. Why would she do that right then and right there? And why was it even filmed? Does it add anything to the story, the mood, the feeling of the film? No. Pointless...
The ending is horrible. It makes no sense, the people involved don't act anywhere near believably. Seeing the dead man's brother "wrestling" with him in an almost necrophilic way, drawn out in slow-motion to apparently give it some grander sense of significance or merit, you're just left with a big sense of...
"..well that was huge waste of my time."